Such equipment as mentioned above is known, for instance, from the German patent documents 37 24 839 C2, OS 27 01 464 and PS 23 36 000.
This equipment, also known as baffle chains, is mounted in a packaging plant between a the conveyance track for delivery of objects to be packaged and the packaging machine proper and is used to accept the continuously delivered individual objects and to store them temporarily in such manner that they can be removed in sets and transferred to the packaging machine proper where they are packaged in sets. For that purpose a baffle chain must be designed to continuously provide a corresponding receiving compartment on its receiving side to the incoming objects and at the same time the set of objects to be removed must be at last apparently stationary on the discharge side for a time interval adequate for such a discharge.
In principle this design is implemented in known equipment by mounting the conveyor chain resting in a horizontal plane on a carriage which is displaceable parallel to the direction of conveyance of the conveyor chain and which is driven synchronously with the conveyor chain. In this manner the receiving side of the conveyor chain continuously moves chain compartments past the receiving position for the objects to be received while the opposite chain side from which the objects are removed in sets is standing still.
Equipment based on the above principle however incurs the drawback that with increasing timing, i.e. operational switching rates which for instance are desired to be about 1,000 events a minute for chocolate bars, the standing time for removing the sets of objects will be extraordinarily short. Moreover the conveyor chain of the known equipment must be pulled each time, that is pulled back into the initial position at the latest at the end of the carriage path, and this procedure also is time consuming and will create problems at high operational switching rates. Another advantage regarding adequately gently handling the products are the centrifugal forces arising at high operational switching rates and speeds occurring in the 180.degree. curve of the known baffle chains. In addition, the known equipment involves the disadvantageous displacement of high masses.